Atrazine Regulatory Issues

Some people say atrazine isn’t safe, but the truth is, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved atrazine again and again. So what? Why should people take their word for it? We think it’s important to know what it means to earn the approval of the EPA and its independent Science Advisory Panels, something atrazine has done time and time again.

Over the years since atrazine’s introduction in 1959, the EPA and independent scientists have reviewed more than 6,000 studies on the product. But reviewing doesn’t mean just reading the studies’ findings; it means verifying the data the findings were based on, and the way the data had been collected and analyzed. This is called ensuring Good Laboratory Practices (GLP). That sounds pretty simple, but GLP is really a very complex system of rules and protocols that govern the way research must be conducted in order to be considered valid. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development created the internationally-recognized GLP in 1981, and has revised them since to ensure that data collected in studies in various institutions all over the world would be consistently valid and subject to the same high quality standards.

Today’s producer cannot afford to simply take this process at face value. We actively engage our trade and commodity associations in the process of ensuring the regulatory guidelines and means by which these products are determined safe by responsible agencies are thorough, meaningful and of sound science.